She told me I was what she wanted, her blonde hair sweeping like
Veronica Lake down her face.
She raised her cigarette to her lips, inhaling deeply and exhaling like a locomotive, even and steady. The orange light of the cherry was all I could see besides the station on the radio and the ambient light of the high beams.
The radio crackled and all I could hear was scattered words of
a song I knew long ago. My hands frozen to the wheel, the car's heat doing nothing. She huddled in her seat without the belt buckled, quickly dragging from her cigarette at regular intervals.
The road spread out ahead of us, a straight line right into the dark horizon. But in my head the ocean flew out behind me like Moses parting the red sea. It was only me and her tonight.